CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

HOLLY

 

When I pulled up to Ben’s house, my nerves switched into high gear and although I hadn't forgotten about whatever the hell had just happened with Brandon, I was hoping that Ben could help me with that.

The ranch-style home wasn’t the most inviting from the outside. The lawn appeared dry and dead in the hazy glow of the light hanging next to the front door. There was little landscaping to speak of with the exception of a few low-lying shrubs that could’ve passed for tumbleweeds. But it was well lit inside, and while uninviting from its exterior, it wasn’t scary, and I got out of the van to walk up the cracked concrete of the driveway, shivering at the constant tickle of the broken-through weeds against my ankles.

Esther would have a stroke out here.

Standing outside the door, I inhaled and exhaled slowly before knocking, making a conscious effort to clear my brain of anything but excitement for the night ahead. I told myself that Brandon didn’t want me, Brandon was only a friend, and with a final deep breath, I knocked.

As if he had been waiting right on the other side, the door flew open. There to greet me was Ben and three large tail-wagging Labrador Retrievers—two black and one yellow. The three beasts pushed past Ben, tripping up his legs as they rushed toward me; pushing against me with their huffing black noses and slobbering mouths.

One of them—the biggest of the black dogs—jumped up to rest his heavy paws against my chest. A thick tongue lapped out of his wide mouth to slurp over my face. My eyes squeezed shut through the sloppy assault, hovering somewhere between amusement and panic.

After regaining his balance, Ben grabbed the dog by the collar and gently pulled him back to the ground. “Jesus, Rocky, that’s not how we make friends,” Ben told the dog, crouching next to the excited animal, mushing his snout affectionately with his hands before standing to flash me a genuine grin.

“Hey, I’m sorry about that. We don’t get too many strangers around here. I hope you’re not afraid of dogs,” he said, apparently noticing the way I clutched my hands to my chest in an attempt to guard myself from the watering mouths of his hellhounds.

“O-oh, no, I, uh, I-I …” I closed my eyes, taking a deep controlled breath. I opened them again to Ben scratching the ears of the dog named Rocky, and I smiled then. “Let me try that again. No, I’m not afraid of dogs. I just wasn’t really expecting that to be the first kiss I got tonight, but you know … here we are.” 

“Rocky just has a thing for the ladies, but here—let me make it up to you.” And before I knew what was happening, he was standing and snaking an arm around my waist. He pulled me into him to press his lips firmly against mine for all of a couple seconds before backing away with a dimpled grin. “Better?”

“Much,” I said with a relaxed smile.

Brandon who?

“I thought you might’ve gotten lost,” he said, releasing his arm from my waist and stepping aside.

I walked into the house, petting the dogs as I went. “Oh, Liz wouldn’t stop talking about work stuff,” I lied, and took a look around the living room, taking note of the Barbie’s and kitchen play set that seemed to be part of the décor.

He caught my gaze. “I bet Liz’s living room looks a lot like this,” he said with an apologetic smile.

“Comes with the territory,” I laughed politely.

My eyes scanned the rest of the room, they fell upon pictures of his little girl—some current, and some of her as an infant—and then pictures of who I could only assume was his late wife; a young woman with a slight bone structure and stick-straight blonde hair. She was beautiful with a catching smile, and one of the rare people I would’ve considered perfect.

He had caught me looking, and as he scratched his head anxiously, he said, “Ah, yeah, that was Cassie. Sorry about all the pictures. I keep them around so that Kaylee can feel like her Mom is still with us.” He faltered a little, and then added, “And, uh, me too.” He diverted his eyes from me, ashamed of the confession.

“Oh, of course,” I said, immediately taken aback by the apology. 

“Anyway,” he quickly changed the subject, placing a hand at the small of my back, the tips of his fingers lightly grazing against the upper slope of my butt. A shiver of excitement trailed through my body as he led me towards the kitchen, the dogs following us every step of the way. There on the table was the famed crockpot, a basket of sliced garlic bread, and a bottle of wine with a candle flickering in the center of it all. “I hope you like pasta. Sauce and meatballs are two of the things I cook best.”

“Thank you. This is … great,” I said, breathless with sudden emotion.

It was more than great. Here I thought I was heading over for a night of meaningless sex, and instead I was presented with an endearing romantic gesture. 

Ben pulled out a chair, inviting me to sit before dimming the lights and rounding the table to his own chair, and we began our meal.

The food was delicious, and he had been right—he really could cook a mean sauce and meatball. The conversation, however, wasn’t what I would call lively or even comfortable, but I chalked it all up to being in his home. I questioned if perhaps the setting had been almost too intimate, and maybe that was the reason why so many people opted to run away to the disconnected confines of hotel rooms.

“So, um, see any cool animals this week?” I asked, glancing up briefly from my plate.

Ben chopped a meatball with the side of his fork, then poked at the pieces distractedly. “Hmm … Yeah, I guess so. A, uh, a lady came in with a Chinook. Never seen one before, so that was cool.”

I made an attempt at being remotely interested. “Oh, what’s a Chinook?”

It sounded like maybe a rodent from some faraway arctic land, one that required intensive exotic care, and my mind conjured up a veterinary clinic that specialized in the strange and unusual. I sniffed a laugh with a little smile at the thought of someone waltzing through the door with a warthog in a harness.

“A Chinook,” Ben said in between bites of meatball, “is a dog. One of the rarest breeds, I think, or at least the last time I checked.”

And just like that, my visions of an exotic animal emporium fluttered away. “Oh, that’s cool,” I muttered without enthusiasm, but I smiled nonetheless because it seemed to be of some importance to him.

“So, uh, how’s Liz been?” Ben asked, taking a sip of wine.

I hadn’t expected the conversation to steer towards my sister, but at least it was something I could talk about without falling asleep. “She’s good. Working at the dentist’s office.”

He nodded. “I haven’t seen her in … God, it’s gotta be years. We’re on Facebook, but we don’t really talk, you know? So, I was pretty surprised when Mark mentioned setting me up with her sister.”

That made two of us. “How do you know Mark?”

“I went to school with his brother. You know Josh?”

I wobbled my hand in the air, squinting one eye. “I met him at the wedding, but I don’t know him.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess you would have been at the wedding. I was in the wedding party,” Ben mused with an excited smile.

I tipped my head slightly, trying to place him. “You were? I was the Maid of Honor. I don’t remember you.”

He grimaced with a shake of his head. “Yeah, you probably wouldn’t. I was eighteen and very, um, skinny with black hair.”

My mouth and eyes opened in shock, remembering the gothic-looking kid who spent the entire night sulking because he couldn’t legally drink anything.

I pointed at him across the table. “Oh, my God, I do remember you,” I laughed.

“Yeah, yeah.” He waved my amusement away with his hands. “Anyway, Josh and I would hang out after school every now and then. I met Mark one of the times I was over there, and we really hit it off. Been good friends ever since. He’s a great guy.” I unintentionally snickered. “Well, to me, anyway.”

I nodded my apologies. “No, I know. It’s just, uh, the history with my sister. I’m a little biased.”

“Oh, yeah, I completely understand. Liz did not deserve the shit he put her through, that’s for damn sure. He had a good thing with her and he royally screwed that up.” Ben rubbed the stubble along his upper lip, drifting off somewhere away from me. “I always thought he was an idiot for throwing that away.”

He looked into the flickering candle flame, hooding his eyes in the light with his finger crooked around the curve of his lip. The room filled with silence, aside from the gentle snores from the dogs coming from the adjacent living room, and the awkward atmosphere returned again. I thought about asking where he had gone, what he was thinking about, but something told me I probably didn’t care to know.

“So, um, anyway, I wanted to ask you a sort of personal question,” he said after a few moments of silence, and I urged him to continue. Anything was better than the uncomfortable quiet. “Don’t be offended, but you were with a gay guy for five years, right? How did you not suspect anything?” he asked with a laugh that I interpreted as facetious.

“Well, it’s not like it was something I thought to ask,” I stated wryly before taking a long sip of wine. “How do you even know about that? I didn’t tell you.”

He shook his head, reaching across the table to take my hand, and for reasons I couldn’t understand, an image of Brandon jumped into mind. Ben’s hand enfolded over mine, gently rubbing his thumb along the ridges in the back of my hand, and I focused on his touch, with hopes that I could erase the notion that it felt …

Wrong. This is wrong.

“I’m sorry. Mark had mentioned it,” he said with sincerity, and I made a mental note to slaughter Mark. “I was just genuinely curious, but I didn’t realize you were, uh—”

“Hung up on it?” I asked accusingly. He briefly winced and looked off to the side, shrugging. “I’m not, really,” I insisted, and mostly meaning it. “But I don’t like talking about it.”

He nodded, looking back to me with those big green eyes. “It isn’t easy to lose the most important person in your life—no matter how you lose them.”

I was so embarrassed that he would liken the death of his wife to my break-up, but I managed an appreciative smile. What I couldn’t shake was the thought that passed through my mind at his comment. He had referred to Stephen as the “most important person in my life,” and when he said those words, I found myself chewing on my lip with the nagging feeling that he had been horribly wrong.

My lip trembled, remembering suddenly that Brandon had wanted to tell me something and I had blown him off—and for what? For dinner and meaningless sex with a man I had absolutely nothing in common with?

My shame and guilt pushed a tear out of my eye, and I wished that Ben hadn’t seen it, but of course he had. In the glow of the candlelight, that one single tear probably shown like the sun, reflecting the colors of the rainbow off the walls like the freakin’ Northern Lights.

Without saying a word, he stood from the table and took my hand, pulling me up from my chair. “Here, it’s okay,” he said softly, wrapping his arms around me. 

He was so warm and welcoming and instinct told me to wrap my arms around him, and before I knew it, my face was buried in his chest, and I shed a few more tears. I allowed Ben to think that I was crying over the loss of my ex-lover, while I internally beat myself up over making Brandon feel any less important than he was.

The most important person in my life.

His hands rubbed my back and he kissed the top of my head. It wasn’t meant to be seductive, but every second that went by, I was feeling more and more aroused by his need to hold me, and I remembered why I was there. I let my hands run the length of his back, the soft fabric of his worn-in t-shirt gliding under my fingers. 

“Ben,” I mumbled against his chest.

He pulled away, so that there was only just a whisper of space between us. I lifted my head, tilting my chin upward, looking into his eyes. He bent his neck, his mouth barely touching my lips, and he hovered there.

“Your ex-boyfriend is an idiot,” he whispered, his eyes gazing into mine. 

There was something in the way he spoke, or maybe it was the flame reflected in his eyes, but whatever it was, it was the final straw. With a lust that traced from my fingertips all the way down to the soles of my feet, I thrust my lips against his, needing to forget about everything but how desperate I was to feel wanted.

Within seconds of frenzied passion-driven kissing, I felt Ben’s hands reach down to cup the two halves my ass, hoisting me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist. A vivid flash of memory came through of leaning against the side of the van, but I shoved it away, focusing entirely on Ben and continuing my assault on his mouth as he carried me off to—well, somewhere in his house. Somewhere that I soon discovered was his bedroom.

Ben broke the continuous kiss to gently lay me on the bed, easing his larger frame on top of mine. I sighed as I felt him pressing against me, finding myself comforted by his weight, grinding his hips against mine as we resumed the tango with our tongues. 

His kisses left my mouth and trailed down my neck, his tongue hot and wet against my skin. His erection pressed against the heat between my legs, and I shifted slightly, reaching my hand down to investigate. But just as I was seeking my destination, just as he inhaled sharply at the feeling of someone aside from himself touching the most intimate part of his body, I felt something else. Something even more hard and far more painful poking me right in the ass. 

“Ow!” I shouted, scrambling to get up against his weight and he jumped right off the bed. 

“W-what? What’s wrong?” His hand frantically reached over to a wall and flipped on the light. “Oh, goddammit, Kaylee,” he muttered, pulling a Barbie doll out from where I had been laying. He sighed and suddenly, he sounded tired and much older than he was. “I’m sorry. She leaves her crap everywhere.” 

I saw in his eyes for the first time how exhausted and frustrated he was, having to do so much on his own. And maybe I was just trying to rationalize what we were about to do, but I felt that we both needed this; if for nothing else but for some kind of release that nothing else was capable of providing.

I knelt on the bed, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Shh, it’s okay,” I whispered into his ear. His arms went to my waist, burying his face in my neck. His stubble scratched roughly against my skin in a way that was sure to sting the next morning, but it felt deliriously good in the moment, and I sighed.

The night took us from a feverish desperation for release, to a sense of present belonging in each other’s arms, while the bed beneath us played a tune I had missed more than I thought I ever could.

My eyes had remained closed for all but one moment, and in that one brief moment, I found him looking down at me and the fervent movement of his hips slowed in pace. I felt everything from the beating of his heart against my chest to the hairs of his legs against my inner thighs, and it all became real. Before that one single moment it could have been nothing more than a memory with Stephen, or one of my hot dreams with a young Tom Selleck. But in that moment, when my eyes met his, I was with Ben.

“God,” he breathed, looking unblinking into my eyes. One of his hands crept up to brush my tangled hair from my face. “You are so beautiful.”

The moment was sweet—typical Ben—and I wished I could have kept gazing into his eyes, to feel everything, but I couldn’t bring myself to delve deeper. Instead, I dug my face into his shoulder, closing my eyes against his sweat dampened skin, and let myself fall back into my fantasies with Tom and tried to convince myself that it would be this way with anybody different and new.